


rowland goes on a date with a hot single bilf in his area

by myshelovka



Category: Blixa Bargeld (Musician), Einstürzende Neubauten, Rowland S Howard (Musician), The Birthday Party (Band), These Immortal Souls (Band)
Genre: AU - Blixa never joined the Bad Seeds, AU - Nick never formed another band after the Birthday Party, Anal Trauma, Anime AU, Birthdays, Blind Date, Colostomy Bag, Goblins goons gremlins and ghosts, Haunted House, Italian restaurants, KGB, Lasers, Messenger Pigeons, Minimal editing, Other, Sibling Abuse, Tornadoes, Torture, dating website, soviet spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myshelovka/pseuds/myshelovka
Summary: it’s also his birthday





	rowland goes on a date with a hot single bilf in his area

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rowland S Howard](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rowland+S+Howard).

> maybe the worst thing i’ve ever written. i’m so sorry rowland

The carrier pigeons he had sent out were not by any means trained or remotely easy to catch, so Blixa was beyond pleased when he finally received a response on his password-protected dating profile. Someone who could spot and wrangle a wild pigeon over a slip of paper and had the initiative to contact him was exactly the kind of person he needed in his life, and as he crawled into his mattress with his 70s flip-phone he felt he couldn’t smack the grin off his own idiot face if he tried.  
Logging into his account, he saw he had over 9+ new messages. From the same person. He prepared to respond.

[2:27 PM]  
callofduty212: shejdjdjjskkklsks  
callofduty212: fuck you ibiot im going to kjll you isiot im foinf to kill you and oure dog dnt come neer  
callofduty212: f u fag  
callofduty212: I Am Going To Have Sex With Your Family.  
callofduty212: fuck sorry you’re’nt Nick Cave  
callofduty212: hi  
callofduty212: your pidgejeon masteryes?  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ZW8JaL_DM  
callofduty212: DONT CLICK TBRAT LINK THAT EAS ANS ACIDDNET  
[dontsmileatme is typing...]  
callofduty212: im sick of being alive please come kill me i only live two ldoorsxxxxxxxxxxxxxxjxjxjxjxjjxdjdkrjwjsjdndnsjs  
callofduty212: Dont Ask Me hHw I Know yOure Address  
callofduty212: imb finggnf HIDIRKENSND COUSSOCUS  
callofduty212: I Am Bringing chickens cousicise  
callofduty212: costco  
dontsmileatme: Are you okay?  
callofduty212: IM OUT COUSCOSU NO CLUSCOUS I CANT BRIJG it  
dontsmileatme: Couldn’t we just go to that Italian restaurant?  
callofduty212: whats italian isn’t that like a kink thing...  
[dontsmileatme is typing...]  
callofduty212: OH I understand. Sounds calm, I’ll be there sure to be sure be sure there sure yeah. regards, ROWARDS ROWLAND  
dontsmileatme: Alright! Would 06:30 be a good time?  
callofduty212: no. i’ll see you there anywayswaysanhwasyshwahsysyshsjsYES  
dontsmileatme: I’ll make reservations! If you’re even a minute late I will not hesitate to cancel and also you. I will tear you limb to limb and leave you to be eaten by roaches.  
callofduty212: ok

At 6:30 AM, Blixa had been passionately kissing his reflection when the alarm went off. Well, not the only one, but the most important one out of all the funny little tornado warnings and evacuation sirens he’d been getting all night, and he most certainly couldn’t allow himself to be late.

Promptly wiping the makeup off his mirror, he started getting ready as quickly as he could - first starting with cleaning the makeup off his face and showering and shaving his entire body and then shaving his face and then drying his hair and then waxing his body and then doing his fifty step skincare routine and then reapplying his makeup and then styling his hair and then trying on every outfit he had until he settled on the only (clean) black suit he owned. 

Then he left the bathroom at least twelve hours after the initial alarm and ran down the hall only to run directly into a very meaty man. That man was coconut crabs.  
“Stop breaking into my house you little slut!”  
“Who are you calling little, Mufti?” Blixa quirked his eyebrow, “If I wanted to obliterate you I’d just have to raise my foot higher than usual-“ Mufti grabbed Blixa with his coconut crab pincers and threw him out of the house and directly into Blixa’s own clown car, likely before he could change his mind and tear him from limb to limb.

Blixa had broken through the back window and hopefully would have landed in the back seat had he not gone face-first into the stereo which began playing Die Mensch Maschine on impact. He got up somehow unharmed, as a primordial being does, and crawled into the driver’s seat. 

He wiped the blood from his nose and pulled his car keys out of his bra and as he put the key to the ignition the car lurched forward and then accelerated on its own into the evening and rammed directly through a telephone pole, cleanly splitting the car in half. The halves reformed into whole cars and one sped off into the distance. 

Blixa then took exactly one turn and reached his destination at the house two doors down. A pale, poorly constructed twig of a man with tar-black hair was vibrating at an intense frequency in the doorway of his home. It was mostly difficult not to notice him because of how the fleeting sunlight hit his garish button up, which looked exactly like a babushka’s Persian-style rug. He approached the car tentatively, peered into the car with dark-rimmed eyes, and then pressed his face against the glass.  
“Rowland?!” gasped Blixa as he smacked the side of his car door, inadvertently slamming into the passenger seat window’s button and opening it all the way and causing Rowland to nearly fall into the car.  
“Oh, hey, Blixa! I was waiting on someone and I wasn’t sure if it was you - have you happened to see any hot single BILFs around here?” he asked as he lifted himself up from the passenger seat, and with a shaky voice, Blixa half-cried out “I AM the hot single BILF in this area! The only one!” (after all, the B in BILF does stand for Blixa,)  
“Well,” Rowland paused for two uncomfortable minutes, “you are single,” he shrugged and Blixa could have wept as he crawled in.

Suddenly, the Kraftwerk song that was playing fizzled our and was replaced with Animal I Have Become. Rowland sat in his seat with an apathetic expression as Blixa darted to the eject button on his CD player only for the Kraftwerk CD to come out. He put it back in. Animal I Have Become continued to play. He then grabbed Rowland and ejected him from the car. Kraftwerk played again. Blixa snatched Rowland back into the car from several miles away and Animal I Have Become came back on. He sighed in defeat.  
“I got you flowers,” said Rowland and Blixa turned to him and just as his own mouth opened Rowland finished with “but I had to eat them because I wasn’t sure how long I was gonna be waiting outside that random person’s house. So here’s an onion,” he pulled a whole raw onion out of his pocket and handed it to Blixa.  
“Uh, nice.” Blixa put the onion in the drink holder and they drove in awkward silence with only the song and the tornadoes in the distance offering any sensory enrichment.

Blixa felt a sense of relief as soon as he saw the big neon sign of the local Italian restaurant, each red letter spelling out a glowing Vaffenculo. Using his expert parking skills, Blixa pulled up directly in front of the building’s front door until he was certain nobody could get in or out.  
As he got out of the car, Rowland awkwardly followed suit.  
“How are we supposed to even inside!!!!!!!!” Rowland whispered as he did the Polnareff pose.  
“Like this!” and Blixa picked him up like a javelin and launched him through the window and then Rowland died as he landed under a table. 

Blixa followed him through the hole in the glass and sat at the table without even consulting the waiter. Rowland made strenuous cracking and grunting sounds as his bones repaired themselves and he started to life himself up from the carpet. Blixa could tell the other diners were staring at him, most of them being straight couples, one family of tornadoes, and Mick Harvey sitting there looking at Blixa and Rowland’s table disapprovingly as he gave them a thumb’s down. He put his middle finger up at all of them. 

“Goddamn sus of a bitch,” muttered Rowland as he finally got up and into his seat and he smiled at Blixa with a blooded face, but it soured as he looked behind Blixa. A voice with a horrifically thick Australian accent greeted them awkwardly, saying “What are you doing with your life right now?”  
Blixa turned around only to see their waiter. Nick Cave. He was wearing a McDonald’s uniform.  
“What are you doing here?” Blixa shot back, a crack in his voice sounding off as he felt a crack form in his calm demeanor. He suddenly craved crack.  
“The music thing isn’t working out too well,” Nick responded quietly, and Rowland suddenly climbed up on the table and pointed down at Nick.  
“Of course it isn’t! Because you suck and don’t know how to write about things other than sexy dead women and the bible!” he yelled and everyone in the restaurant stared at them again, including the tornadoes that didn’t have eyes.  
He then got back down in his seat and licked himself as any cat(man) would. Nick clenched his hardening nipples and grimaced as tears welled in his laundry detergent colored eyes.  
“What’s with the uniform?” tactlessly asked Blixa, and Nick turned to him with gritted teeth.  
“Budget cuts! They can’t afford to produce uniforms here so I had to use the one from my old j- never mind, what can I get you two to drink?”  
“Wine,” said Blixa as he put on a pair of sunglasses just to readjust them, then came the expected question of “which one?”, and Blixa slid his glasses down slightly and looked up at Nick.  
“Yes.” he clarified, but Nick did not feel clarified. He turned to Rowland, who was still licking himself.  
“As for you?”  
Rowland yanked his head away from his own thighs and looked Nick right in the eyes and said “Cheerwine,” and Nick’s eyes widened.  
“We don’t... we don’t, uh, have th-“ A glass of Cheerwine materialized on the table. Every other diner in the restaurant took out a tomato and threw it at Nick while chanting “Liar! Liar! Liar!” and he ran off to the kitchen crying.

Blixa sighed and let out a little bit of urine he didn’t even know he was holding. Urine sighed and let out a little bit of blixa he didn’t know he was holding. Blixa

To say that Rowland was a lot different than Blixa anticipated was an understatement was an understatement in itself. As he looked down at the leopard print tablecloth, he reveled in the irony of he situation. The man in front of him was someone he already knew as well as someone he thought he knew! He had once known him as a fellow musician and sometimes friend, and now through the dating pigeon network he had met him as “callofduty212”. Rowland was gnawing on the lit candles. ‘Appetizers!’ he silently declared with a swift chomp. Blixa watched in a way that could be best described as ‘paralyzed’ as he swallowed without chewing. Rowland dabbed the edges of his mouth with a napkin and looked into Blixa’s eyes.  
“How sensitive is your ear canal?” he asked calmly as he slammed his fists into the table.  
“Uh...” Blixa paused, “I never really, um, checked. Maybe you can find out for yourself?” he brushed his ear behind his hair and then his hair behind his ear. Then he pulled out a really big clump of lice and ate it. Rowland moved his hands down and frantically unbuckled his pants, leaning across the table as though to climb upon it just as the abomination known as their waiter waddled back over to the table with a giant rhinestone studded goblet filled with green ooze.

“Your wine, sir,” he quivered to Blixa, likely because (as Blixa noticed) there appeared to be a lobster’s claw pinching his groin. He placed the goblet on the table and whimpered as he tore the lobster off and threw it behind him. It landed in a tornado and spun around silently, as lobsters cannot scream. Nick pulled out a first edition copy of the Declaration of Independence and a pen.  
“Have you decided on anything?” 

Blixa placed two fingers to each of his temples and closed his eyes, swaying as he attempted to activate his chakras to help him intuit what kind of meal he needed today.  
“Pasta clams,” said Rowland, who Blixa could no longer see because he had his eyes closed.  
“P-Pasta clams? Uh,” Nick’s vibes trembled and Blixa heard a soft thud as something hit the floor, followed by Nick seeming to scramble to the floor to get it as it rolled further and further away. He ran back and with heaving breaths presumably tried to regain his composure.

“Pasta clams.” Rowland’s voice was stern, and Blixa imagined his gaze must have been just as intense - although maybe crosseyed. The slight redness in his vision from the restaurants’ few lights shining against his closed eyelids seemed to become more intense - but he felt, if not hoped, he merely imagined it.  
“We don’t have Pasta alle Vongole.” He gulped, and Blixa heard glass shattering and the sound of a car’s horn honking amid the screams of the damned and also Mick Harvey. He remained calm in his culinary soul-search, but something about those screams felt uncomfortably familiar; as if he had been in this situation before. An infernal heat overcame him, and he could no longer bring himself to sway for all he could do was sweat.

“I’m not asking for Pasta from all of Mongolia or some shit,” Rowland spat as he climbed on the table again, “I want the clams. The pasta that’s shaped like an open clam shell with the cheese in it in Maryanne sauce or some shit.” The sound of more crashing occurred as the rumbling of an engine became louder and soon faded out and the red in his vision was almost unbearably bright. Nick dropped something again.  
“You mean stuffed shells?” He asked as he swooped down to pick that something up, which Blixa at this point assumed was his pen. He heard a crackle at the back of his skull and involuntarily squeezed his eyelids tighter.  
“Clams, Nick! They’re fucking-pasta-goddamn-fucking-clams, goddammit!” Another crash, and then a scream erupted from deep within his date’s diaphragm. The scream went on for minutes, pausing briefly as the sound of loud sipping and then a glass being put down on the table overtook it. 

He continued screaming. He could feel Rowland stand up and stomp towards Nick.  
“I’ve had enough of you! I’ve had e-fucking-nough of you, you wanker!” Cloth ripped and Nick shrieked, and perhaps “get off me! get off me!” could have been what he said if he wasn’t currently unable to articulate it. 

He knew Rowland’s aura was violently interacting with Nick’s and Blixa retreated further into his blackened psyche for what he couldn’t tell was determination or safety, yet he felt less like he was burrowing into a rabbit-hole but rather a shallow grave.

“You actual fucking wanker,” Rowland snarled again as Nick kept backing away. Rowland stepped forward, shaking.  
“Always jacking off, always fucking wanking - at home, in the studio, on the stage, especially in the studio,”  
“Hey, t-that’s the past now, Rowl,” Nick stammered, and yelped as Rowland seemed to pull him back towards the table. Blixa wanted to open his eyes, or even scream, but he felt frozen.  
“That’s not even in reference to your ego - there was so much cum on the floor! So much fucking cum! You never cleaned it up either, always expecting other people to clean up your messes,” Rowland’s rant became more frantic and paused abruptly as he shoved the man he had just been pulling. Nick hit the floor with a thud, and cried out when he took a hit to his stomach chakra.

“You,” Rowland seethed, “your lack of responsibility, your lack of responsibility nearly goddamn killed me! All that fucking cum on the studio floor... You never slipped on it, so it wasn’t a big deal, huh? Well, I did! I did, and I got sixty concussions and tore my asshole open and broke all three of my legs because you didn’t want to clean up after yourself! I could have died! The doctors weren’t even sure if they could help me because I got my Jag jammed so far up my pisshole they weren’t sure if they could get it out! Fuck you!” The shriek that followed rung throughout the entire town, and somehow got stuck in all the tornadoes which echoed it repeatedly and indirectly intensified the crackling in Blixa’s skull. 

Nick was hit again, again, and again.  
“How did it go in King Ink? Sand, and soot, and dirt, and dust, and YOUR FUCKING CUM EVERYWHERE!” Another hit.  
“That was ten years ago - TEN years - Rowland,” he wheezed and he sounded like he was desperately trying to get up. More cloth ripped and suddenly both men were struggling on the ground.  
“Ten years?! Ten years for you, but I’m still living with the aftermath! Let me fucking show you,” The red and the crackling and the heat and the screams were unbearable.  
“No! Please!” Nick screamed through sobs and Blixa opened his eyes and light fired out and nothing could be seen except the same white hot bright red that had plagued his vision for the past 2 minutes and the sounds died down and his vision cleared up and by god Mick Harvey had his eyebrows blown clean off by Blixa’s lasers and by god Mick Harvey would have screamed louder if not for the Spaghetti alla Puttanesca stuffed in his mouth. 

Rowland and Nick were tangled together on the floor in a bizarre embrace, a kind of position you wouldn’t want to see your date in with another person and especially not on the first date. Their clothes were torn, which worsened the way things seemed, and Blixa for one clear moment could make out a colostomy bag peaking out from beneath Rowland’s slightly pulled up shirt.  
“Carbs...” Blixa moaned quietly and his head fell onto the table. He was now unresponsive. Nick wept harder now.  
“I thought you liked that kind of thing - I really just wanted to make you happy and I didn’t, I didn’t realize it would lead to-” he sobbed.  
“It was a joke, Nick. I didn’t realize you took it that seriously, though I should have expected it from someone of your intellect.” Rowland pulled up his shirt and revealed his colostomy bag, and had damn near opened it and emptied it on Nick until Blixa shot up like a lightning rod and inward-screamed. He hid it and immediately levitated back into his seat.

“I’ll take whatever Mick’s having!” said Blixa to Nick, as if nothing happened, and then rested his head back on the table. Nick snatched his ring finger off the floor and tightened it back onto his hand, only to watch it fall back off with the same thud Blixa kept hearing earlier.  
He huffed and shoved it in his pocket, then wrote down the order on the Declaration of Independence, and he scurried back to the kitchen. 

Rowland scooped the buttons from his off the floor and into his mouth, and as he returned to the table he buttoned what was left and tucked his shirt again.  
“Sorry you had to see that,” Rowland looked away from Blixa awkwardly as he sat down with no candlestick left to chew.  
“It’s alright,” Blixa got up and reached for his bubbling goblet and took a sip of his wine. He furrowed his brows as it oozed into his mouth.  
The consistency was exactly like cum.

There was a long silence between them, and soon even the screams of other patrons as well as the screams caught in the tornado had died down.  
“Maybe I should tell you the real reason I’m here, besides just catching the pigeon..” Rowland looked down and let out a heavy sigh, and Blixa snatched his hand and stuffed it in his own mouth. Rowland looked at him and raised one of his eyebrows so high it literally hit the ceiling and then shook his head.  
“I’m afraid this might be a rebound,”  
Blixa tilted his head in response, with now half of Rowland’s arm lodged down his throat.  
“You see... My girlfriend left me recently, and I kind of miss her and I’m not fully ready to move on, so, uh - I don’t want this to become anything serious right now,” he pulled his now slimy arm out of Blixa’s throat and Blixa gasped for air.  
“I wasn’t looking for anything serious either,” said Blixa moments before regurgitating all of Rowland’s buttons on the floor. They both looked at the bile-soaked buttons in shock, and then looked away as they chose to ignore such things for their own comfort.  
“That’s good because I was genuinely just looking for someone to play a game with, I’m not out here falling in love or having sex,”  
“Are you a gamer?” asked Blixa as he rested his head on this hand and gazed into Rowland’s spirit, which was churning like butter.  
“Yeah! I really like playing board games,“ Rowland leaned in, “especially Parcheesi.” Blixa turned away to vomit again. After non-stop hurling for about 2 minutes, he turned to Rowland and wiped the vomit off his face.  
“Sounds great, maybe we should play it after dinner,” he made himself drink more of his ‘wine’ to keep from vomiting instead.  
There was a crawling sensation under his skin he tried to ignore and he contorted his cheeks into a smile that looked more pained than pleased. He didn’t feel right, but he certainly felt obligated despite the acrid aftertaste of bile in his mouth.

Nick bust through the wall with their orders as well as a basket of complimentary bread rolls and he placed down the bread rolls, then Blixa’s pasta, and then placed down Rowland’s “pasta clams” - but it was so close to the edge of the table that the clams fell to the floor. The tomato sauce splashed to the carpet like blood at a crime scene, and Rowland let out an ungodly guttural wail and lunged at Nick yet again, tackling him to the ground and ignoring Nick’s attempts to claw at his eyes as he straddled him, lifting his shirt and pulling his pouch out again. 

Blixa looked around frantically for an escape, his vision gliding across the two massive holes in the restaurant left by whatever drove through earlier and towards the door, which he had parked in front of earlier. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he thought, and he simply looked away from Nick and Rowland. He knew what was happening and he absolutely didn’t want to. He immediately tore a complimentary bread roll apart and stuffed two pieces in his nose to block out the smell and he shoveled the Spaghetti alla Puttanesca in his mouth with a fork in hopes to drown out his senses with the strong salty flavor of the sauce, which to his disappointment he found was totally flavorless. He closed his eyes and tuned into the sound of his own chewing.

Nick was screaming so loud now and then his screaming moved to another room as he was presumably thrown.  
“My clams, my poor, poor clams,” Rowland sobbed and Blixa opened his eyes only to see his dark-haired date laying on his side spooning the pasta and the loose sauce off the carpet and straight into his mouth with his bare hands. Nick was crying too, and his howls could be heard from the kitchen. Blixa swallowed his pasta and looked down at him.

“Maybe we should leave soon?”  
Rowland sat up just as he ate the last pasta clam. He looked down in a daze, suddenly calm after all this catharsis.  
“Yeah,” his voice was hoarse from all the screaming. Blixa got out of his seat and helped him up, and they started to head towards the door, but then they saw their car parked in front. “Shit!” 

“You’re not going to tip me?” asked Nick suddenly as he appeared behind them, covered in excrement.  
Rowland turned around and spat directly in his face, and Blixa felt the pit of guilt in his stomach sinking rapidly, so he pulled out sixty Australian dollars and awkwardly handed them to Nick. He then clipped through the door and into his car and then reversed it to let Rowland out. As soon as Rowland got out the restaurant and into the car, Animal I Have Become played once more. Blixa pulled out of the restaurant’s parking lot as quickly as he could for he knew that if they lingered they would surely face the chef’s wrath.

“Back to your place, right?” Rowland shook his head in response.  
“I don’t live there, but I live close enough - take a turn here.” They were on the only road and to turn would be to turn into the tornado-swarmed field.  
“Are you Mentos?!” hissed Blixa, and that hiss turned into a scream as Rowland grabbed the steering wheel and made the car swerve off the road. The car swerved left, right, and flipped twice as they struggled for control of the car, and the music became deafening the closer they got to one of the largest tornadoes in the field.  
“You’re going to get us killed!” shrieked Blixa just as Rowland swerved the car into a smaller tornado and they spun around rapidly and for just a moment Blixa saw himself at every stage of his life spinning around him screaming at him in a choir of mockery. “You have killed us! You have failed us!”  
“No, I’m going to get us home!” shouted Rowland and he gripped the steering wheel as if he was determined to die and almost as if his home wasn’t here but rather in Gehenna.  
The car flew through the air and into the largest tornado. Blixa closed his eyes again and he felt like his heart was loose and bouncing around in his body as the car spun faster and faster and flew again - they say the fall is the worst part, but at least it doesn’t last long. The sound of the car hitting the asphalt was deafening and as he was ejected from the front window with Rowland he involuntarily let out the scream and the tears he had suppressed deep within himself for their entire dinner together

They were fine. The car wasn’t, but they were uninjured and laying on an asphalt road. Rowland stood over Blixa and lifted him up.  
“Not that bad of a landing, Blix,” Blixa felt like he could hardly move and he looked around. There was a single nice suburban house and a road just like any other you’d find in such a neighborhood, just the road only extended for about 15 feet and ended abruptly, leading into grass and then a dense forest that completely surrounded the house. Rowland put Blixa’s arm around his shoulder and lead him towards the house, and Blixa had found himself too weak to protest. Rowland leaned in and began whispering into one of his pointed ears.  
“We should be careful here, because in my house there’s lots of goblins, goons, gremlins, and ghosts, such as-“ as he opened the door the figure of a man burst through the rotting floorboards, “HARRY!” screamed Rowland as he nearly dropped Blixa.  
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROWLAND!” screamed Harry in response as he landed on his feet upon a less rotten piece of floor. He was holding a plate with a round silver tray cover obscuring the contents.

As Blixa peered inside the house, he noted the perplexity of a clean suburban house being an absolute wreck within, in a way he felt was akin to the human condition. He then felt a painful shock to his neck because the sexy anti-pretentiousness shock collar he wore went off. As he carried the crying Rowland in closer to his grinning brother, he made sure not to accidentally step into one of the many holes in the floor. He noticed mysterious stains on every surface, and massive spiderwebs which was almost overshadowed by the eyesore that were the obviously homemade birthday party decorations. 

“Do you like them?” Harry asked through a grin, and Blixa grabbed Rowland’s head and made him look.  
Several diamond-shaped pieces of brightly painted paper hung from a string affixed to the leaking ceiling and spelled out “С ДНЁМ РОЖДЕНИЯ РОЛАНД” and there was a blown out speaker playing nineties Russian boyband music. Harry was grinning impossibly wide and pulled a lever that lowered a disco ball from the ceiling.

“Harry, they’re gorgeous but now is not the time!” Rowland sobbed.  
“I even got your girlfriend to come back for this! Carolyn’s here, Rowl!” Harry’s enthusiasm was unhampered as he gestured with his leg towards the wall where a large crayon drawing of a woman covered in dark blue fur with over-exaggerated curves. Blixa wasn’t sure whether he felt a twinge of anxiety or disgust.  
“I really don’t wanna fucking see Carolyn right now!” Rowland continued sobbing into Blixa’s arms, and Harry was still smiling although he did pull a random curtain over the drawing. The German froze in front of Harry, who was shaking with joy.  
“I just want some alone time with Bli-“  
“Maybe some cake will cheer you up!” Harry pulled the tray cover away to reveal a cake and everyone but Harry in the room froze. It seemed like a vanilla frosted cake with syrupy strawberries at first sight, but there was a massive black tarantula and 4 dead cockroaches on top and both men screamed indefinitely and Rowland climbed Blixa like a tree. Harry stopped frowning, and walked away with the cake to place it down on the dinner table. The tarantula started to crawl off the cake and walk towards somewhere darker.  
Harry walked over with his hands on his hips and frowned at them.  
“Why don’t you ever appreciate anything I do for you?!”  
“I just want to play Parcheesi with Blixa, goddammit!” Rowland yelled in lieu of screaming, and Blixa cringed so hard he dropped Rowland who nearly fell through a hole in the floor. Harry lifted him up with near superhuman strength and even though he struggled to get away Harry began forcefully swing dancing with him. Harry stepped on a Minecraft pressure plate that opened up a hole in the wall that swarms of rats and cats and bats emerged from, flooding the room and in the chaos Blixa tripped over a cat and fell into one of the many holes in the floor. All he could see were the animals moving across the hole and the light from the ceiling glinting on the backs of the centipedes squirming around him.

“My dear brother, my tovarisch, this is more than your birthday! This marks our 15th year abroad. We can finally go home! We don’t have to cooperate with the KGB anymore!” Harry cheered in the midst of the animals’ cacophony, and he cackled.  
“The KGB is gone, Harry! The Soviet Union isn’t around anymore, it’s been two years!” Amid their arguing, Blixa was desperately trying to climb out the hole but all he could do was rake at centipede filled dirt.  
“That’s exactly what they want you to think! Rowl, you’re so naive,” Harry let out another cackle, “Don’t you miss Leningrad? We wouldn’t have to hide anymore, Rowl, we can all go home now, you, me and-“  
“We can’t! We don’t have to go anywhere,” snapped Rowland as he pushed Harry towards the table.  
“Looks like someone’s been seduced by capitalistic decadence. Are you afraid you’d miss your Levi’s?” Harry spat.  
Blixa had raked and now piled up dirt to stand on and reached for a floorboard and just as he grabbed it Rowland had stomped on his fingers as he charged towards the other man and Blixa screamed - but not as loud as Rowland.

“That’s it, Harry! You’re going in the Bad Boy Box!” and he grabbed Harry, ignoring his wails and kicks as he carried him to another room. Blixa could hear Harry still screaming in Russian from the other room as Rowland came back and peered into the hole.  
“Why’d you fall in the hole?!”  
Before Blixa could respond, Rowland extended his entire body to lift Blixa out the hole.  
“You still up for Parcheesi?”  
Blixa awkwardly nodded and Rowland took Blixa by the hand and walked him by the now silent living room, where he saw a black box with a small window in it that the younger Howard was peeking through.  
“You are cheating on Carolyn?!” Harry observed minutes too late, and burst into tears.  
“Me and Carolyn aren’t even together anymore!” Rowland snapped, and then tried to drag Blixa upstairs.  
“You betray our home country, your girlfriend, and now you leave me on a block of ice because I wouldn’t let you get away with it?! Rowland, I am ashamed! I am so very livid! Ты козел!” Rowland ignored him and Blixa could only keep walking with him despite feeling like he just got punched in the gut.

“Harry never quite grew out of make-believe,” Rowland sighed as he stood in front of his room. All of a sudden, an unholy high-pitched voice began singing crude songs from below.  
“Oh god, oh fuck,” Rowland keeled over,  
“Are you okay?!” Blixa stepped on Rowland’s face. Rowland groaned.  
“He’s doing the fucking Tiny Tim impressions again,” he let out a disgruntled sigh, “I can’t be a hardcore gamer under these conditions,” and then Rowland seemingly fell asleep. Blixa moved away awkwardly and went into the room in front of them. He peered in and saw absolutely nothing but massive spiderwebs, one of which had board games stuck in it, his guitar and equipment, and a custom made body pillow of “Carolyn” hanging from a noose. 

He closed the door immediately and he felt off, and he decided to go to the bathroom to calm down and consider his options. Now, he didn’t know where the bathroom was - but he knew it had to be up here because there were only three rooms downstairs. There were two other doors to investigate, and he opened the one behind him first.

Inside was merely a blue children’s bedroom with two spinning chainsaws welded to the ceiling in lieu of ceiling fans, and a dog kennel with “HARRY” painted on the side, and Blixa cringed upon seeing it. He closed the door, and headed towards the last one which had to be the bathroom. He opened the door and his heart fell into his nutsack for he saw the bathroom, which was larger than the other two rooms combined, was completely and utterly packed with goblins, goons, gremlins, and ghosts. He screamed and slammed the door shut because worst of all, they were having Bible study. 

Blixa bounded down the hallway, nearly flung himself down the stairs, and scrambled into the living room to the Bad Boy Box. Harry beamed at him from the window as Blixa opened the top and pulled out the so-called bad boy in a frenzy.  
“Oh, fuck - Harry, shit - fuck me,” Blixa sputtered out, unable to form a coherent sentence. His organs felt like they were about to bust out his chest.  
“No! Virginity rocks!” Harry almost bit the hand that freed him, and Blixa wheezed.  
“That’s not - that’s not what I meant! There’s goblins, ghosts, gremlins, and goons in the bathroom!”  
“Didn’t Rowland tell you?”  
“They’re having Bible study!” he shrieked loud enough that the house’s already crumbling infrastructure shook and the kitchen collapsed.  
“Thanks, that room was kind of an eyesore,” said Harry, “and they’re what now?”  
“Bible. Study. Study of bible,” Blixa spat again and he could not stop shaking and he realized hadn’t felt anything like this since he quit meth, “I need to leave,”  
“Wait!” yelled Rowland from the staircase as he suddenly descended, and Blixa screamed again and grabbed Harry in a poor attempt at shielding himself, and then Harry grabbed him and lifted Blixa from the ground and ran with him outside. 

Nothing fuels a man quite like spite. 

Rowland ran after them and had gotten out of the house just as they had almost crossed the road. Blixa was hyperventilating and trying not to scream anymore than he already had, but then Harry stopped running - and it seemed so much slower to Blixa than it truly was in reality. He stopped. He tilted. They fell. All because of a tree root. They both tried to get up in unison and looked back at Rowland, who was about to cross the road.  
“Come on, Blixa! Can’t we have another chance to play Par-“ and just as he got in the middle the other stray half of Blixa’s car rammed into Rowland. The car left as quickly as it came and left a now dead Rowland on the road. Blixa froze in place with widened eyes and his mouth hung open and he looked just as dead. Harry ran over to the body and threw himself on top of it, weeping and wailing so loud that perhaps even the people back at the restaurant could hear it.  
Blixa crawled over tentatively and listened to Harry blubber something about communism. Then he immediately stopped crying and wiped his tears and snot on the shredded remnants of Rowland’s Persian rug button-up, then he blew his nose on it.  
“He’ll be fine. He does this a lot actually,” Harry sniffled, “I just needed an excuse to cover him in snot.”  
“Umm nice,” Blixa sat there in silence with Harry. He expected they’d sit there until Rowland got up, until the man beside him turned to look him in the eyes.  
“You suppose there’s anything good at the theatre these days?”  
Blixa smiles at him.  
“Why don’t we go and see?”  
With that, they locked arms and skipped away merrily to town.

As for Rowland, he came back to life several hours later covered in snot and blood and upon remembering what happened cried himself to sleep in the middle of the road, in turn covering himself with more snot.

Rowland had completely and utterly ruined his birthday-he-didn’t-realize-was-his-birthday, and it was nobody’s fault but his (and Harry’s).

The End

**Author's Note:**

> you can really tell i was working with a short deadline bc 75% of this was written in the past few hours. also i’m so mad that it shows the date as 25 october bc i wrote and posted this on 24 october in my timezone.. smh


End file.
